Wild Wing Rider Roller Coasters Coming to America

The free-flying seats pioneered in Europe are set to open at three U.S. parks this spring.

Arms still intact, Mark Cutrone, an ex-Red Arrows fighter pilot, survived to recount the story of his test ride on a new breed of roller coaster alleged to have ripped the limbs off dummies during trial runs. The Swarm, which opened at Thorpe Park in London last week, is a "wing rider": a coaster that suspends passengers next to the tracks, as if on wings. This spring, three wing riders make their debut at U.S. amusement parks.

The seats on a wing rider are cantilevered from the center of the train track in an effort to simulate the sensation of flying. With nothing directly above, below or in front of riders, a wing rider amplifies the coaster's movements and creates a new rider experience.

"I was actually a little nervous, just looking at the ride, wondering if we were going to make it between the buildings," Cutrone says. "It's the closest thing to flying. With the smooth sense of rolling, pulling of g-forces, and screaming dives—it feels very similar."

Swiss company Bolliger & Mabillard (B&M) engineered the Swarm. "If you consider a plane, when it makes acrobatic turns or inversions, the motions are amplified at the wing's edge," B&M engineer and president Walter Bolliger says. "We wanted to create this experience, a different way of feeling the elements."

Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., and Six Flags Great America in Chicago will be opening a B&M wing-rider design with four fully cantilevered seats. Dollywood took advantage of the park's natural terrain by winding the ride alongside the Great Smoky Mountain foothills. Six Flags chose to maximize thrill; its train dodges around structures and plunges through tiny keyholes.

Hersheypark in Pennsylvania will be getting a coaster with the "semi-wing-rider" style of Intamin, a Swiss manufacturer that pioneered an early version of the wing rider in 2007. Intamin's cart features two-center seats with traditional floors, flanked on both sides by a winged seat where riders' legs fly free—an arrangement designed to accommodate adrenaline junkies and the friends they drag to the park.

"Freedom is what roller coaster enthusiasts want most; others want to be protected and surrounded," says Joel Bullock, who writes The Coaster Critic blog. "[On a wing rider] you'll be completely exposed—free or scary, depending on what you're into."

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To enhance the free-flying experience, B&M and Intamin ditched conventional restraints for lighter, less restrictive alternatives. On Hersheypark's Skyrush there is no harness or over-the-shoulder restraint, just a lap bar to hold riders in place during the train's 85-degree descent. For Dollywood's Wild Eagle and Six Flags' X-Flight, B&M manufactured a soft, vest-like restraint that settles over the shoulder while still leaving ample room surrounding riders' heads. The winged seats on Skyrush jut five feet from the center of the tracks, offering 270-degree panoramic views of the park. (Hersheypark engineering director Kent Bachmann advises riders to jockey for the second row, where the coaster itself won't be blocking riders' line of sight.) The outer winged seats on both of B&M's coasters extend six feet, and passengers have eight feet of legroom. What Skyrush lacks in wingspan, however, it makes up for with speed—reaching 75 mph compared with Wild Eagle's 61 mph and X-Flight's 55 mph.

On all the coasters, riders will experience three directions of g-forces—front and back, side to side, and through the spinal column—ranging from zero to almost five g's at the maximum. Space-shuttle-type g-forces are felt in the front and back direction only and are typically around three g's.

"Forces are acting on people very differently on a wing rider," says Sandor Kernacs, engineer and president of Intamin. To ensure rider comfort, he explained that Intamin angled the seats back almost 60 percent more than usual in order to lower the rider's center of gravity.

Shifting the passengers from the center of the coaster presents engineering challenges, too. The loads on the cantilevered seats are almost three times greater than on the center seats, increasing the likelihood of microcracks and fatigue, Bachmann says. To overcome these issues, Hersheypark used an integrated design in which the 16-ton carts were milled from one large piece of steel, rather than fabricated from several separate pieces. Using finite element analysis, Hersheypark engineers also experimented with different types of aluminum to determine which combination of materials minimized stress from the cantilevered seats (though they refused to reveal their top-secret coaster specs.)

Soon, U.S. riders will be able to offer their own critiques. Dollywood's Wild Eagle opened to the public first on March 24, and will be followed by Six Flags' X-Flight on May 12 and Hersheypark's Skyrush sometime in late May. No fighter-pilot experience needed.

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